Personality and Jobs

During one of my previous posts on behavior, I promised a sneak peak at the different personality types for the people in Fief.  I wanted to create a model of personality that is both fun, simple, but has a touch of realism.  I also wanted something that had a medieval feeling as well.  The model I came up with is loosely based off the temperaments model of human personality.  

Here’s the list of the personalities, their icons, and the temperaments they are loosely based on.

Personality	In-Game Icon	Corresponding Temperament
Air		Sanguine
Earth		Melancholic
Fire		Choleric
Water		Supine
Void		Phlegmatic

The next table has the interesting portion.  To understand it, I’ll elaborate on how Fief will handle the assignment of labor on the manor.  Traditionally, it is believed, the intricate social structure of the manor largely had the peasants handling their own affairs without much direct intervention from their lord.  They organized their own labor and did the tasks that needed to be done.  Since this is a game, I bend the realism here a bit for the purpose of fun and strategy, so the player will be directly assigning job roles to the peasants.

Job roles can be assigned to peasants at job sites.  Job sites will come in a few varieties: designated areas, buildings, and outliers.  Designated areas are simply zones on the manor map that have a social designation, such as someone’s leased land, the commons, the fields, or a woodlot.  Buildings are structures built for a particular labor, such as a brewery, bakery, or mill.  Outliers are sites of large scale extraction/production of particular resources in the outlying land surrounding the manor village.  These are “off the manor map” locations in the game.  You will not gain access to outliers until the population of the manor reaches the appropriate size, until then, you are limited to the resources on the manor map.

Job sites will have a number of “slots” available for particular role assignments.  These role slots will also have a type based on the organization of labor at the job site.  There are three position types for role slots: leader, subordinate, and independent.  A person in a leader role at a job site will be directing the actions of people with a subordinate role.  Those with an independent role will decide for themselves what to do.  The role assignment will determine what jobs a person performs at a job site and thus which skills will be utilized and improved.

As an example, you could assign a group of peasants to work on the woodlot as lumberjacks.  This woodlot has four slots.  One peasant is assigned as a leader, two are assigned as subordinates, and a fourth peasant is assigned to an independent slot.  The leader will choose which trees are to be cut down and mark them, the subordinates will cut them down, while the independent peasant might ensure there are plenty of new plantings as a manager that isn’t necessarily working with the lumberjacks, but does work on the same job site.

Personality will have a large effect on how well a peasant works in a particular role on a job site.  As shown in the table below, some personalities like being in a particular position, while hate being in other positions.  The focus determines whether a person is motivated by finishing personal goals (goal-oriented) or by socializing with others (social-oriented).  The last column lists whether social interactions increase (extrovert) or decrease (introvert) a person’s social energy.